


Tax

by Kalya_Lee



Series: The Only Certainty [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Grief, Multi, Post-Reichenbach, Wholock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-13
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2018-01-01 09:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1043452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalya_Lee/pseuds/Kalya_Lee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tax (n.):<br/>1. A strain; a heavy burden.<br/>2. Required payment; a due.</p>
<p>“Trust me,” says the man, “I’m the Doctor. What’s your name?”<br/>“Holmes,” Mycroft says. “Sherlock Holmes.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Deduction

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to Azrae, for the beta. :)

_Deduction (n.):_

_1\. The drawing of a conclusion by reasoning; logic._

_2.  The act of taking away._

***

The glass is cool beneath his fingertips. It’s heavy tumbler, rim gently slicked with saliva, slightly chipped around the base. There is the slightest scent of vintage whisky clinging to it, the residue of previous pours, none more than an hour old. Well-cleaned, then, well cared-for, filled far too many times tonight by a barman with strong hands and great pride in his work and mild to moderate anger issues.

_Pedantic_ , says the voice in Mycroft’s head, with characteristic scorn. _How far the mighty fall. Deducing whisky glasses, really? Could you get any more dull?_

The bar, then. The bar top is old, glossy hardwood that hasn’t been affordable to plebian pub owners since the turn of the last century. Far too expensive for a dingy pop-hole like this, so the owner must have been fairly well-off, a long time ago, but the pub’s since fallen on hard times. The bar’s surface is clean, but there’s dust in every other corner – either the current owner has a nostalgic streak, or, judging by the dated linoleum and flickering lights, he doesn’t give two hoots about the bar or the rest of the pub, and it’s the barman who spends his work hours meticulously polishing it. Which might account for the anger issues, really.

_A child could deduce that_ , says the voice. _In fact, I actually did, back when I was a child. Am I meant to be impressed?_

The man on his left quit his job as an accountant last week, and his wife has since left him. The woman behind him is having an affair with her female colleague. The girl in the corner is a runaway, the black sheep of a wealthy family, and she’s far too young to be drinking what looks like her fourth scotch.

The man on his right is staring at him.

“Good evening,” says Mycroft, his words barely slurring with weary neutrality. A suit shirt and suspenders and a red bow tie, a folded tweed jacket laid on the bar. A young face and ancient eyes and a shock of floppy hair, a broken wristwatch. Long, pianist’s fingers, wrapped around a glass of milk, half-full. For once, Mycroft doesn’t understand.

“Hello,” says the man, cheerily. His smile is wide and his eyes are sad. _Hiding_ , says Sherlock’s voice, and then, _hiding what?_ For once, Mycroft doesn’t want to know.

“Have I met you before?” He would have remembered if he had.

The man smirks. “No.”

Mycroft’s eyes narrow. “Have you met me?”

“No.” The man’s smirk softens to something amused, fond. “That’s a good question, though. A very unusual question, of course, but very good.”

“I am an unusual man,” Mycroft says, and there was a time when he would have smiled, small and smooth, proud menace barely visible under the layers of culture and courtesy that he wears like a mask. As it is, he does not smile, and the statement comes out sounding like unabashed truth.

“And very good,” says the man, almost gently. His hand reaches out, hesitant, then swerves quickly to the left and joins the other, curling around his glass. _Unabashed truth_ , whispers the voice, and Mycroft closes his eyes.

“No.”

“Yes. Really, truly, definitely yes.” The man’s smile is back, eyes lit with a joke only he understands. “Trust me,” he says, “I’m the Doctor. What’s your name?”

Mycroft looks down. His glass is no longer empty, filled with half an inch of milk. “Holmes,” he says, at last. “Sherlock Holmes.”

“No,” says the Doctor, but he murmurs it, and Mycroft pretends he doesn’t hear.

***

“This is the TARDIS,” says the Doctor, flinging out his arms. “She’s –“

“Some sort of ship,” Mycroft cuts in. “Highly advanced, as it seems perfectly comfortable with breaking every law of physics known to man. It probably travels in time, too, given your clothing choices.”

“ – bigger on the inside,” finishes the Doctor, a little put out. “And she’s a _she_ , not an _it_.”

“ _She_ , then,” Mycroft says, the corners of his mouth curling upwards. “My apologies.”

He runs a hand over the console, reverent and enquiring, and the TARDIS all but purrs. The Doctor scowls.

“Come on then, Holmes,” he says, dancing over to slam the doors. “Where to?”

“Well,” says Mycroft, considering. “I havealways been a great admirer of Churchill.”

“Who, Winston? He’s a great bloke, bit portly, always sticking his nose in places it doesn’t belong. Like my pockets.” Mycroft smiles, amused, eyebrows rising, and the Doctor pauses, clears his throat. “Anyway, as I was saying, great bloke. He’ll like you, Holmes, you two strike me as kindred spirits.”

The Doctor dances around some more, throwing levers and pressing buttons and flicking switches with a manic grin. The column in the centre of the console – _blown glass_ , says Sherlock’s voice, _fifteenth-century Venetian, coated in some unknown glaze, probably off-world, clear anachronism_ – rises, and the floor jerks violently. Mycroft clutches the console’s edge, hanging on to his balance and his dignity by the tips of his fingers. The Doctor whoops and does a little jig.

His feet are light but his shoulders are stiff, his face overly animated. Forced, false. There are creases at the corners of his eyes – he’s as tired as Mycroft is.

_Conjecture_ , sneers Sherlock. _Guessing. Sentiment._ Then, a little more gently, _you think that was amazing. Why don’t you tell him?_

 “Are you going to persist in calling me Holmes?” Mycroft asks instead.

“Well,” says the Doctor, shrugging. “I’m not calling you _Sherlock_. It’s a strange name, doesn’t suit you at all.”

“No,” says Mycroft, a little hollow. “I suppose it doesn’t.”

He startles as an arm lands across his shoulders, a curiously warm weight against his neck. The Doctor’s sleeve is smooth, most likely cotton, well starched and heavily worn. Mycroft closes his eyes, for a moment, savouring this gentle contact, this something between brothers from a man who is, so painfully, not his.

“Although I’m really not one to talk about people’s names,” the Doctor says, and it’s so clearly an apology. He drops a hand down to Mycroft’s forearm, squeezes gently.

Mycroft does not pull away. He adds it to the list of things he doesn’t understand.

***

Churchill is, indeed, a great bloke, and Mycroft spends a fantastic four-and-a-half hours discussing political strategy with him until the Doctor gets antsy and knocks the tea-table over. It turns out that there’s an alien parasite poisoning the tea leaves, and the Doctor leaves them to chat about trade ties with France while he whips up a cure in the TARDIS.

They go to an alien planet next, a sweet little world in the Delphinus constellation. It has gorgeous lavender skies and rose-scented silver grass and soil rich in rare, precious chemicals, and a ruthless dictatorial government that specializes in purging dissidents. The Doctor blows up Parliament House and screams _run_ , an invitation that Mycroft respectfully declines. Instead, he politely requests an audience with the Head Chancellor, and manages to broker a trade deal on behalf of the Earth’s booming chemical industry and convince the government of the merits of the democratic system _(equal monopoly on power if played properly, reduction in death and hence loss of talented individuals, lower chances of revolution)_ by the time the Doctor stumbles into his office, an army of stormtroopers at his heels.

Now, they float in orbit around a supernova, the console room flooding with the light of a dying star through the wide-open doors. The TARDIS is, apparently, charging, and she hums softly against Mycroft’s cheek as he leans against the door frame. His legs dangle outside, gangly and uncharacteristically undignified, kicking out into the shining dust.

Sherlock would love this, Mycroft thinks. Would have loved this. New worlds and new cultures, new mysteries to solve every day, and every day a new study in running. Every era and every planet and every star, every secret in the history of the universe, theirs to discover. He had never liked to stand still, and he never would have had to, in this life, where every morning opens to a different, beautiful disaster, where even resting brings them into the heart of a sun.

Sherlock used to burn, used to thrum with the energy of a million stars, used to run like Mycroft is now learning to run and dance through his own little world, his own small universe, pressing up against its edges like an impatient child. His city, his planet, his _life_ – they had never been enough to hold him. Sherlock had been a fire, so alive, so sure of something _more_ , and now he is quiet and cold and six feet under familiar earth, and Mycroft is here, sitting in the TARDIS doors, kicking dust into a supernova.

Injustice, Mycroft thinks, has never burned like this before.

A hand lands on his shoulder, heavy and soft and already so familiar, and then there is a warm mug of tea being pressed into his lap. Mycroft clutches at it with desperate fingers as a pair of legs, longer and ganglier and more ungainly than his own, slide out into the air beside him. The Doctor shifts, subtly, until they are sitting shoulder-to-shoulder and hip-to-hip, until they can feel each others’ heartbeats spill into the golden silence.

Mycroft takes a sip of his tea. Black, two sugars, bittersweet.

“Who did you lose?” the Doctor asks. The question is gentle but it stings, the fingers of a friend ghosting over an open wound.

“My brother,” Mycroft says, distantly. His voice does not shake. “I loved him, perhaps too much, and I destroyed him.”

The Doctor laughs, lilting and bitter. “I know how that is.”

They sit in silence for a while longer, their stillness turning lazy circles around a sun. The tea does not grow cold. Sometimes, the Universe allows for minor miracles.

“And you,” Mycroft thinks to ask, after several long minutes, “who did _you_ lose?”

“Who _didn’t_ I lose,” replies the Doctor. He laughs again, and Mycroft feels an odd ache in his chest that he’d only ever felt for one person before. “My friends, my family, my people. I lost my whole world.”

“Yes,” says Mycroft, almost reverent. “So did I.”

It isn’t quite the same thing, but then again maybe it is.

***

River Song falls into his world like a bolt from the blue.

Literally. She leaps into the TARDIS from a Dalek ship, sailing down through the sky and gliding through the doors and into the console room. Mycroft has to admire her grace, and her composure. She doesn’t even lose her poise when she crashes into his arms.

“I told you to open the doors and get out of the way,” the Doctor snaps, testily. “I specifically said _get out of the way_. Get _out_ , not get _tackle-hugged_ by my _wife_.”

“Jealous, sweetie?” She grins at him, a little wickedly, and leaps up off the ground with the agility of a blasted _cat_. Mycroft pulls himself to his feet, brushing off his suit and trying to regain the dignity she’d crushed as she landed. It isn’t as easy, he realizes, as she makes it look.

“No, no, of _course_ not – well, a little.” The Doctor runs over from the other side of the console, looking terribly put-upon. “River, this is Sherlock Holmes, the friend you nearly _crushed to death_. Holmes, this is the missus.”

“Doctor River Song,” says River, extending her hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Mister Holmes.”

“Likewise,” says Mycroft, raising her hand to his lips. She looks like a young woman, likely in her thirties, although her eyes indicate otherwise. Her hand is soft, smooth, with calluses dotting her palm and the pads of her fingers, a rough patch on the side of what Mycroft guesses is her trigger finger. She has wild golden hair, curling out in lush, slightly singed corkscrews, and blood-red lipstick, freshly applied – the marks of a proud woman, confident in her beauty. She smells of industrial soap.

Mycroft lets go of her hand, raises an eyebrow. “I’m sure your prison guards must be missing you soon, Doctor Song. Or have they already become accustomed to your adventuring?”

River purses her lips, amusement shining in her eyes. “They’re fine as long as I bring them back a few trinkets.” She turns to the Doctor, who seems to be slowly backing himself behind the time rotor. “Have you been telling him about me, sweetie?”

“No,” says the Doctor, with some pride. “It’s just a thing he does. He’s very clever.”

“Is that so,” River says, eyes narrowing slightly, predatory. “I think it’s very impressive. I also think it’s my turn.”

The Doctor nearly flies around the console, planting himself between them. “No, River, I don’t think – “

“Not at all,” cuts in Mycroft, trying not to flinch. “I should very much like to hear what you think of me.”

He knows what she’ll see, after all. Three-piece suit, bespoke, not from the TARDIS wardrobe but from his own favourite tailor back in London. Jacket singed by a Dalek’s ray, but tie still perfectly in place. Black leather office shoes worn down from reluctant running, still shiny. Straight back, stiff shoulders, stoic face. A government man, not an adventurer. A man who likes control. A man not made for this life.

“The man who used to do that,” she says instead, waving her hand across her body, “how long ago did you kill him?”

Mycroft freezes. The Doctor freezes. “River – “ he says, sharp, horrified, and she turns to him, places her hands on his arms, cutting him off with a look.

“Could you leave us alone for a while?” she asks, low, and it’s actually a request. The Doctor watches her for a few long moments, eyes searching, then turns and leaves without another word.

“Sherlock Holmes,” says River, turning back to Mycroft. Her eyes seem to burn into him, past his jacket and suit shirt and right into his chest. For once in his life it is hard for him to move, to stand. It is hard for him to breathe. “That’s not your real name, is it.”

He breathes deep, and he hates how ragged it sounds, how strained. “No,” he says, neutral. He makes himself meet her eyes.

“Guilt is a burning thing, Mister Holmes,” River says, almost gently. “Believe me, I know. I killed the best man I’ve ever known. I know what guilt feels like.”

“He wasn’t – Sherlock wasn’t – “ Mycroft takes another breath, wills himself to be calm. “He wasn’t the best man I’d ever known. He was childish, exasperating, infuriating, and on occasion the bane of my existence. But I loved him.” He looks up at her, at her forced smirk and her light tired eyes. “I don’t think you’d understand that.”

“I do,” she says, with the slightest hint of mirth. “More than you know. I understand the hating and the loving and the losing. I understand the guilt, and I know how it burns. I understand wanting to be like that person that you’ve lost, because you think, somewhere in some small warped part of your soul, that being like them is the same as bringing them back. But there is something, Mister Holmes, that _you_ don’t understand, and you _should_.”

Mycroft gulps, back still straight. He plants his feet, pulls his shoulders back. _Bracing,_ says Sherlock’s voice, taunting. _Get your gloves out, Brother_. “And what, Doctor Song,” he asks, voice perfectly steady, “is that?”

“You are forgiven,” she says, and it’s a whisper, a blessing, an absolution. She takes a step forward, two, and wraps Mycroft in her arms, and he lets her, because she can see through all his masks anyway. “Always and completely forgiven.”

In the middle of the TARDIS console room, River Song stands, all hard edges and sultry strength, and lets Mycroft Holmes cry into her shoulder. Sometimes, the Universe allows for minor miracles.

When the Doctor returns, ten minutes later, Mycroft’s eyes are dry, his suit only barely rumpled. River has changed her shirt, and she leans on the console, tea in hand. They are chatting with a cozy familiarity, and over Mycroft’s shoulder, River grins and winks at him.

The Doctor wonders, flips a lever, doesn’t ask.

***

"Don't blink, Holmes, don't even blink!"

"I don't think that's physically possible. Don't you typically have a plan in these situations?"

"Yes, well, I'm working on it. For now my plan is _don't blink_!"

They blink. 

***

They land in Victorian London, 1895. It takes Mycroft a few moments to figure it out, at first, and a few more to feel properly horrified. He's a little bit thrilled and a little bit disoriented, and the gaslights throw beautiful shadows on the cobblestones, and if he shuts his eyes it all feels much more intentional and much less real. 

From beside him, the Doctor grunts. "I left a message in the TARDIS. It'll go to River," he says, sounding characteristically hopeful and disconcertingly resigned. "It shouldn't take her more than a year to find us."

Mycroft pulls himself to his feet, hand on the gray slate of the wall behind him. It's an effort, but not a terrible one. "A year in her time or in ours?"

The Doctor grimaces, and Mycroft offers him a hand. "Well," he says, dusting off his tweed, "hopefully whichever is the shorter."

They decide to get settled in, just in case. Victorian society is different, unfamiliar, but despite all he has to learn it fits Mycroft right down to his bones. The Doctor, for his part, seems oddly comfortable, almost at home. They do like bow ties, here. 

Mycroft takes cases, because they need the money and because he can, and for once, the Doctor is the one following, running where he leads, watching his back. He finds it oddly satisfying. They make a bit of a name for themselves, Sherlock Holmes the eccentric genius and the Doctor who follows him around. Sometimes, the pretence makes Mycroft feel odd, uncomfortable - other times, it feels so _right_ that it becomes wrong all over again. 

They take lodgings at 221B Baker Street. It is acceptable. 

***

"Hello, I am Sherlock Holmes," Mycroft says, to their first private client, and the lie rolls stickily off his tongue. "And this is my colleague, Doctor– “

“Watson,” finishes the Doctor, as Mycroft’s eyebrows shoot towards the sky. “Doctor John Watson.”

They complete the case together, a quaint little problem involving a Christmas goose and a blue carbuncle, and at the end of the day Mycroft lets the thief go. A year and a lifetime ago, he knows, he might have handed the man over to the police, he might even have punished him himself. A year and a lifetime ago, he would not have been so merciful.

But here there is a man who burns empires and hugs crying children, who makes Daleks tremble and makes his clients smile. Here there is no authority to answer to, no CCTV and no control, no need to be accountable for every little action. Here there is fog and tea and a blazing hearth. Out there is a blue box and a wide universe and a _home_ , and here and now there is a man who runs ahead and runs behind and runs beside, there is someone who understands him and _enjoys_ him, a man who winks and fiddles with his bowtie and smiles at the suspects like they’re wonderful, and here and now, Mycroft shows mercy.        

“The magic of John Watsons,” muses Mycroft, smiling over the rim of his mug.

“John Smith was always a rubbish name, anyway,” says the Doctor, and plunks another three sugar cubes into his.

***

“I’m writing my memoirs,” says the Doctor, dropping a typewriter on the sideboard with a clang. He flexes his fingers, long and lily-white, cracks his knuckles. Mycroft looks up at him and sets his book down, bemused. It occurs to him that bemusement had never been within his vocabulary of emotions, before. It feels oddly comfortable now.

“Your memoirs,” says Mycroft, with a slight lilt. “Nine hundred years old, and you’re writing your memoirs _now_.”

“Closer to a thousand, really.” The Doctor’s fingers are on the keyboard now, dancing up and down in little flurries and leaps. The bell dings. “No time like the present.”

“So where do you start,” Mycroft asks, the lilt in his voice becoming a full-on smirk. “The time you shot down a cyber-ship? The day you closed every crack in time and space?”

The Doctor looks up, fingers barely pausing. “Last week, with the giant Sumatran rat and the trained cormorant. What was the boatman’s name, again?”

They write the memoirs together, in the end. Mycroft tells stories, Sherlock’s stories, about the first night with the cabbie and the pills, about the games and the puzzles and the hound of hell. He pulls up all of Sherlock’s old cases, and the Doctor writes them down, with flying fingers and reverent words and soft, unquestioning eyes.

His voice shakes when he talks about the fall.

“In a hundred years,” says the Doctor, paraphrasing one of Sherlock’s rapid-fire text wars with John into words that the Victorian public would be able to understand, “people are going to think we’re gay for each other.”

Mycroft laughs, loud and open, over his tea. “Unfortunately for our budding romance, Doctor, you’re already married.”

The Doctor winces. “As are you.”

“I’m married to my work. You’re married to a _wife_.”

“Same thing,” says the Doctor, shrugging. “Only mine is sexier.”

***

It does, indeed, take River less than a year to find them. Eleven months and four days, to be exact. The TARDIS lands with great aplomb on the hearth rug, missing the coffee table by inches, the scraping of the engines clearly audible over the crackle of the fire.

It is, Mycroft thinks, the most beautiful sound in the world.

The Doctor charges the blue box the second it appears, nearly knocking Mycroft over, and the doors swing open at his touch. “You left the brakes on,” he cries, leaping inside. “You _never_ leave the brakes on!”

“Hello, sweetie,” says River, resplendent in the golden light, grinning at them from the console. “Hello, Mister Holmes.”

“Doctor Song,” says Mycroft, inclining his head. “Fancy seeing you here.”

River laughs, properly _laughs_ , less bitter and sardonic than he’s ever heard it. “You weren’t that hard to find,” she says, nodding to the TARDIS doorway. There’s a shelf there that wasn’t there before, a bookshelf, wood-topped, almost identical to the sideboard in 221B. On it is a row of books. _A Study in Scarlet_ , reads one spine. _The Valley of Fear_ ,reads another.

The Doctor dances about, clapping his hands in delight. “Good old Arthur. I suppose I owe him a favour, now.”

“More like _he_ owes _you_ one,” says River, rolling her eyes. “Are you boys coming or not?”

The question is for Mycroft, he knows. The Doctor is already _in_ the ship, practically hugging the walls. He takes a step over the threshold, turns back.

Golden light spills out from the TARDIS doors, filling the small living room and lighting its dark corners. It illuminates the dust on the armchairs, glints off the small brandy tumblers on the mantel, catches on the keys of the old typewriter on the desk by the window. Something sentimental and small catches in his throat. _Home_ , thinks Mycroft, involuntarily, _and home_. Home in the firelight. Home in the TARDIS.

He needs to go. He doesn’t want to.

“Yes,” he says, “of course.”

***

“Take me home,” Mycroft says, not long after. “I think it’s time, don’t you, Doctor?”

“Yes,” says the Doctor, a bit sadly. “I suppose it is.”

He drops Mycroft off outside his flat in Kensington Gardens, and Mycroft doesn’t know how to say _this isn’t what I meant_.


	2. Return

_Return (n.):_

_1\. The act of restoration; to come back.  
_

_2\. A positive consequence; a reward.  
_

_  
_***

Mycroft’s house is exactly as he’d left it, all gentle beige carpet and high ceilings and a sleek black car humming gently by the gate. The air in his rooms isn’t yet stale, the dust on his shelves hasn’t yet begun to gather. Outside, the rain falls, normal Earth rain. It was drizzling, that night when Mycroft left. It’s the same rain, more than likely, and more than likely nothing much has changed here at all.

Change is relative, he has learned. Home is, as well.

The Doctor had told him stories, volumes and volumes worth of stories, about the people he’d travelled with. He’d tried to sugarcoat them, naturally, because he was the Doctor, but Mycroft had always been good at peeling that kind of coating away. He’d heard the tales of the intrepid journalist, the adventuring philanthropist, the many Defenders of Earth, and had seen, instead, a group of brave and changed and broken people. Young, strong, eyes-opened and abandoned. He’d listened to the stories, and seen the truth of the people, left behind and left to pine.

Mycroft Holmes does not pine.

He does not scorn his cream-coloured walls, longing for burnished bronze that used to sing into his mind. He does not look up at his high ceilings and dream of the freedom of deep space with a crushing claustrophobia. He does not go looking for danger, he does not feel every minute of the extra two years that belong to him and do not technically exist, he does not jump at the merest glimpse of something blue. He does not decide that his life no longer has a meaning, nor does he change his life and his work and his calling. He does not long for a home that was never here, and he does not mourn a sense of belonging that he’d never used to have. He does not stumble through his life, cut loose and unmoored, like he knows that John Watson is doing now.

Mycroft Holmes does not pine, and Mycroft Holmes does not wait. He does not and he cannot and he _will_ not.

Instead, he goes back to his life like he’d never left. He negotiates trade ties with human emissaries and declares war on Moriarty’s network and takes his tea at nine, and it’s completely normal and unremarkable and right. Change, after all, is relative, and he may have changed but that doesn’t mean he has to show it. He has a country to run and a brother to avenge and a madman to destroy, and he has no time for nostalgia, not even for the Doctor.

***

“Sir,” says Mycroft’s Assistant, on his first day back. “If you don’t mind me asking, is everything alright?”

Mycroft startles, but imperceptibly, and shoots her a look. Martha – she’s going by Martha today, and the name makes him smile for a reason he can’t place – is looking straight back up at him, phone still in hand but, miraculously, locked. She looks _concerned_ , and it’s such an odd look on her that he smiles again.

“Yes,” he replies, all coolness and surety, “why do you ask?”

Martha shuts her eyes for a second, then slides her hand back over her phone’s surface, unlocking it with characteristic nonchalance. “No reason, sir,” she says, fingers flying. “None at all.”

***

All his suits smell of starlight and air and dust after rain and there is a copy of the previous day’s _The Sun_ on his desk. His shoes have holes worn into their soles, and a half-full tumbler of brandy sits, abandoned, on his nightstand. His precious umbrella is gone, too, used to bar a door in an England far in the future to hold off an encroaching cyber-army.

Mycroft has his broken pieces, broken _before_ and broken _after_.

The Doctor had replaced the umbrella immediately after they’d returned to the TARDIS. The new umbrella was sleek, and black, like Mycroft’s old one, but its handle was bright red and question-mark-shaped and all Doctor.

“You need a brolly, Holmes,” the Doctor had said, holding it out. “You don’t look right without one. Have mine.” He’d swung it round once before handing it over, the motion smooth and practiced, and then he’d presented it to Mycroft like it had meant nothing at all.

Mycroft buys new suits and new shoes, but he keeps the old ones, unmended and unlaundered, in a box under his bed. He’s allowed a little sentiment, he decides, if he keeps it hidden, unobtrusive, unseen.

He pours the brandy over the newspaper on his first night back, then tosses the sodden mess in the flames, watches it burn blood-red and beautiful.

He keeps the umbrella tucked under his desk.

***

He still sees River, occasionally. She has his number and he has hers, and they meet for lunch when Mycroft isn’t juggling international crises and River isn’t jumping out of spaceships. They take turns to pay for the meal. When Mycroft pays, he orders one of his black cars, and they take lunch in London, in Bristol, in Paris. When River pays, she slams both their palms on her wrist, and they eat wherever they land.

They tend to talk about business, when they’re together. More specifically, they tend to talk about _Mycroft’s_ business. He’s grown to respect River’s sharp mind and appreciate her willing and ever-accurate trigger finger, and she somehow manages to fill even the dullest tactical discussions with sparkling humour and stinging innuendo. His spies in Moriarty’s web tell him of legends told to new recruits, children’s bedtime stories about a woman in a red dress and killer heels who appears from nowhere to punish the guilty. They hint at rumours that Mycroft’s been hiring ghosts, that he has alliances with aliens, that he’s made a deal with the devil. He tells these stories to River, one day, and she laughs.

Sometimes, though, they don’t talk about their work, about trade deals or alien artifacts or Moriarty. Sometimes, they will finish their food, and Mycroft will call for a pot of tea, and they will sit for a few hours and just talk.

“He loves you,” River says, on one such occasion. She says it without preamble, but then again, there is never a preamble between the two of them. There is never any need for one. Mycroft looks at her, calmly sipping his tea, and his hand does not shake.

“He loves _you_ ,” he says, finally, because it is a truth. He knows close to nothing of anyone’s love for him, not the Doctor’s or Sherlock’s or even his own mother’s, and he cannot confirm or deny any of it. But the Doctor does love River, and so that is what he says. He sees no point in lying to her.

“Yes,” she replies, steadily. “There are many kinds of love, Mister Holmes, and we are capable of feeling more than one of them. You of all people should know this.”

“Yes,” says Mycroft, because he does. There are many kinds of love, and they all hurt the same way. “It has not, however, been particularly beneficial in my experience.”

She gives him a look, says nothing, pays the bill, slaps her wrist. They land with a flash back outside his office. A black car pulls up next to them within the second, the window wound down.

“Doctor Song,” says Mycroft’s Assistant, inclining her head.

“Amelia,” says River, winking at her. “Try Amelia.”

Amelia smiles, opens the door, and Mycroft slides inside. River smiles down at him, a little motherly, and he finds that somehow he doesn’t mind. “Until next time, Mister Holmes,” she says, and she is gone.

***

He never does see the Doctor.

He thinks that, perhaps, this is a good thing.

***

It is past midnight, and Mycroft is still at his desk. Papers are strewn across its aged mahogany surface, escaping their usually-orderly stacks – a treaty here, a case file there. Moonlight streams through the half-shut blinds, catching on the gloss of the dark wood floor. Mycroft’s umbrella nudges, gently, against his thigh. It’s a normal night, quiet, busy with the loneliness of purpose.

There are footsteps in the hall.

Mycroft, stubbornly, does not look up. The house is empty, tonight, and there is, as always, a guard at the door. The footsteps grow louder, closer, and Mycroft’s heart pounds, dancing wildly in his chest, and he does not look up. He will not let himself look up.

He knows who owns these footfalls, he thinks. Only one person could, could slip past his agents and come straight in with those light waltzing steps, both relieved and weary. He will not look up, he will let him come in, seemingly unnoticed. _Holmes_ , he will say, and _then_ Mycroft will look, but he will not smile, and he will not leap to his feet and –

The footsteps stall, stutter in the doorway. Stop. There is guilt there, Mycroft knows, even without looking. Guilt and a painful hesitation, both completely ridiculous.

Maybe he _will_ , he decides. Maybe he _will_ smile, maybe he _will_ leap to his feet and go. Maybe he will say, _you should never have left me_ or _without Sherlock there’s nothing for me here_ or _take me with you, now, please_. Maybe, for once, he will do something true.

Maybe he will. _Holmes_ , he will say, and –

“Mycroft,” says the man at the door.

Mycroft looks up.

The man at the door is not brown-eyed and brown-haired. He is not lanky and awkward, not covered in stardust, not grinning like the ancient child that he is. He is not wearing tweed. He has no bow tie. He is black-haired and silver-eyed and tall, and he wears a black coat and a tired face and he is not the man that Mycroft has been waiting for, but then again he is.

“Sherlock,” says Mycroft, and his voice _does_ shake, but he doesn’t care.

He doesn’t smile, but he does leap to his feet, and when he hugs his brother for the first time in far too long, it’s true enough.

***

“I’ve killed people,” Sherlock says, reflectively, hunching over his plate. He eats his pasta with the hunger of the starved, and Mycroft silently wishes for the days when his brother would have picked through it, slowly, and would definitely have removed all the mushrooms first. “What does it mean, that I’ve killed people?”

“You needed to,” says Mycroft, automatically. “You had no other option, so you took the one that you had.”

Sherlock snorts. “That, dear brother, is your excuse for everything.”

It is, Mycroft realizes, with a small wry smile. He almost says so, because it’s almost funny. But Sherlock’s curls are falling into his eyes, like they did when he was a small child, and those eyes are darting, flickering across the table, where before they would have been still and raised, guiltless and sure. “You’re forgiven,” he murmurs, instead. _Always and completely forgiven._

“I don’t need your forgiveness,” snaps Sherlock, hoarsely. His eyes cloud slightly, but Mycroft doesn’t need that to know that he’s lying.

“How?” Mycroft asks, after a silence. He asks partly because he wants to distract Sherlock, and partly because he wants to distract himself, but more than anything he asks because he wants to know. “How did you do it?”

Sherlock gives him a look, eats another bite of pasta. “Molly Hooper,” he says, finally, with a small smile. “She forged the papers, but I thought I would just have to risk the jump. But then,” he pauses, chews his lip. His eyes light, just a little. “Then someone _caught_ me. I saw such _things –_ impossible things, Mycroft.” He gives Mycroft a look, and for a minute Mycroft thinks of the old Sherlock, the Sherlock of _before_ , with his highhanded amusing disdain. “Things you’d never believe. You simply lack the imagination.”

Mycroft thinks of impossible things, of tea in Churchill’s bunker, of silver sands and lavender skies. He thinks of young old men and deadly stone angels, of boxes bigger on the inside. He thinks of the case files on his desk: murderers and blackmailers killed, nothing caught on camera but the slightest flash of blue. He looks across the table at his brother, his _impossible_ brother, back from the dead, and he knows. He _knows_.

“Try me,” he says, anyway.

***

Mycroft wakes to the sound of the TARDIS.

It sits in his back garden, and inch away from his careful rows of lilies, a blue box on green grass against a black sky. A man stands in the open doors, dressed in tweed.

“Hello, Holmes,” says the Doctor, cheerily. He shuffles his feet.

“Doctor,” says Mycroft. He leans back against the wall, two arms-lengths away. He does not smile, and he does not shout, and he will not cry. “Won’t you come in?”

“Nah,” the Doctor says. “That’s alright.”

The silence stretches between them, dark and rich like the sky without stars. The Doctor sticks his thumbs in his pockets, and Mycroft’s shoulders are growing cold. The TARDIS hums, and Mycroft hears it, but it’s so far away.

“Two years,” says the Doctor, voice carefully light. “It’s been two years, hasn’t it? For you.”

“Yes,” Mycroft says, neutrally. “He just came back, last night.” The formality in his voice stings, a little, sticks in his throat.

More silence. The night hangs, dark and quiet and cold, and there is too much to say.

“You never asked me,” the Doctor says, finally. His voice quivers, just a bit, querying. “You could have asked, at any time, but you never did.”

 _I couldn’t_ , Mycroft thinks. _I couldn’t ask you to save him. I was afraid you would say no. I was afraid you would say yes. I was afraid you would fail, or that you would succeed. I thought you might laugh at me or say you couldn’t with tears in your eyes and I –_ “I was afraid,” he says, and it is a truth, it is _the_ truth.

“I did it for you, you know,” the Doctor says. His voice is light, musing, but underneath is a ripple of something else. “I mean, he’s a great man, and a good one, and I do love him, on his own, but. I saved him for you, Holmes. Because you thought I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, and I,” he pauses, throat bobbing, looking down at his toes. “I owed you, I guess. For everything.”

“You owed me nothing,” says Mycroft. _You could have told me,_ he thinks. _You did owe me that_.

“I couldn’t have,” the Doctor murmurs, and Mycroft can’t tell if he’s heard Mycroft’s thoughts or just his own guilty conscience. It doesn’t really matter, either way. “He couldn’t have come back, not till it was safe, and you would have torn yourself to pieces, worrying about him.” Mycroft opens his mouth, possibly to protest, but the Doctor shoots him a look and he closes it.

“You would have, because that’s what you _do_ , when you lose someone you love. Or you would have gone with him, because you love him, and then England would have fallen, without you.” The Doctor’s voice is low, a bit rough. His mouth turns up at the edges at the last bit. “Either way, you’d never have forgiven me. And you’d never have forgiven yourself.”

As excuses go, it’s not a bad one. As logic goes, it’s excellent. Mycroft cannot find a single hole in the argument, and he knows that he never will, because it is flawless. He thinks of the two years since he’d returned, mourning and fighting and forcing himself not to mourn, and of the years before that, crying into the stars, and it can never be flawless enough.

“Logic,” he says, and it comes out too bitter. “That’s what it was. Hard, cold, flawless logic.”

“No,” says the Doctor, and his voice is strained but his eyes burn bright. “It was sentiment.”

Mycroft says nothing. There is nothing more to say. Up above, the first stars start to come out.

“For what it’s worth, Holmes,” the Doctor says, “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” says Mycroft, and the Doctor nods. He steps back into the TARDIS, doors closing behind him, and fades away. Mycroft watches him go.

 _You’re forgiven_ , he thinks. _Always and completely forgiven_.

Someday, maybe, it will be true.

***

One day, the Doctor will stop, and decide that he no longer wants to travel alone. He will find a friend, then, another person who will hold his hearts in their hands and run away with him. One day, they will find themselves floating in orbit around a dying star, and then they will sit in the TARDIS doors together and drink tea as they watch it burn.

When that day comes, the Doctor’s friend will turn, and look him in the eye. “Who did you lose?” they will ask, and the Doctor will hear the love in their voice, and he will smile.

“My whole world,” the Doctor will say. “And somebody else’s. But that one I gave back.” _  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the second half, in time for the 50th! ;) To be honest, I didn't time it this way, I'm just a slow writer. I wasn't even planning on getting it out today, but my flight to London was delayed (14 hours, ugh) so I had some free time. Here's hoping the delay was worth it, eh? ;D
> 
> Anyway, I do love this story. Thanks for reading, and I hope you love it too. :)


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